Annual EMSC Grantee Meeting

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and

National EMS Information System (NEMSIS) Updates

June 20 – 22, 2006

DREW DAWSON: Thanks, Dan. Good morning everyone. I would just also like to re-emphasize what Dan said the partnership that we have with Emergency Medical Services for Children, HRQ, CDC, and also some of the organizations within the Department of Homeland Security that we try very hard to make sure that there’s a seamless program. We worked well together; we’ve exchanged money back and forth, and worked very hard to make sure that we’re all pulling into the same direction. And basically, I think any one of us could probably give the update on the federal program activities for any of the others that we worked that closely together.

One of the activities that is under way to assure that all the federal agencies are working together kind of in a formal sense is the new federal interagency committee medical services. This is a group that was created by our Department of Transportation reauthorizing legislation. Basically, it constitutes a fairly high level body. Basically, the assistant secretary or associate administrator level from a variety of federal agencies to come together and do formal planning, formal needs assessment reporting to congress of the status Emergency Medical Services and basically elevate both the visibility of Emergency Medical Services nationally and elevate the importance of the interagency coordination. It doesn’t seem like a big deal but getting a lot of high-level folks together from all the respective agencies and to do so under some specific statutory authority is a fairly major undertaking. And one that we think is going to significantly improve the visibility of EMS nationally.

On the creation of that, our secretaries, Secretary Madetta, who’s my boss sent out letters a little bit over a month ago. We’re starting to get responses in from the other agencies about who their nominees are and it’s likely that the first meeting of that group will be held this fall. That’s under the statute as required to provide administrative support to (inaudible) in conjunction with HHS and DHS.

One of the other kind of big changes at our shop, is in 2004 congress created something called Enhanced 911 Act of 2004. What that did is to establish a fairly -- it authorized a fairly large grant program to support 911 Implementation Phase II compliance of cell phones -- compliance of cell phones to Phase II of the FCC requirements, which was basically location information and number information from a cell phone.

That authorized a program of $500 million per year for a five-year period of time. The keyword there is authorized; it didn’t appropriate that $500 million. There will be an appropriation probably at FY ’08. There is an appropriation in FY ‘08 of about $43 million for that program. This is an office -- there was a requirement to set up at a national level, and one office between National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Department of Commerce MTIA. We’ve come to agreement that National 911 office basically will be housed in the office of Emergency Medical Services at National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. We’re basically getting that in the process of getting a set up between us and the Department of Commerce. Right now we’re doing that without a lot of money. We’re hopeful we’ll actually have an appropriation for that down the road.

Those two activities within the Department of Transportation actually created in February, a change where we were a division of Emergency Medical Services to an office of Emergency Medical Services. What that does is kind of a one step up in the bureaucracy and provides better access to decision makers, better visibility for the program within the Department of Transportation, potentially additional resources down the road. So, that change was effective at the beginning of February.

We will be -- just so you know, Secretary Mandatta’s been very supportive of (inaudible) particularly, and we have authorization for a staff person to work with us on that, we’ll be hiring -- hopefully getting the notice out in the next couple of weeks for an additional staff person to really work on (inaudible) and federal long-term strategic planning.

There is a cooperative agreement we have -- when I say we, everything we do is between us and Dan, particularly, a project with the University of California in San Francisco to do an assessment to the national EMS workforce. There are lots of responsive information, particularly lots of anecdotal information, some factual information from state to state, but I think everyone is concerned with assuring the viability of the national EMS workforce what we wanted to do is to make sure that we had a formal assessment by a kind of trusted institution that has some experience in doing workforce assessments. That assessment, first phase of that should be completed this fall, as all of our projects is done in conjunction with the national EMS organizations providing input to that. So, the EMS workforce assessment should be the first phase of looking at other steps to assure a viable national EMS workforce.

We are working toward -- certainly implementing the EMS education agenda for the future. The first part of that, EMS core content, has been completed. The second phase, the national scope of practice model, is essentially complete, we’re making a few last minute tweaks to that that should be available shortly. And the third phase of that, National EMS Education Standards, which will be, an eventual replacement for the National Standard Curricula at all levels. That is currently in the contract with the National Association of EMS Educators and they are in the midst now of working on the National EMS Education Standards.

Many of you are probably familiar with the National EMS Information System, which has been a cooperative effort between the EMSC, NHTSA and CDC to really look at better standardization of pre-hospital of Emergency Medical Services data, data definitions, data dictionaries, etc. And eventually, culminating in a national EMS database that can give us information about what is happening on with Emergency Medical Services on a nationwide basis. That actual EMS database will be housed at NHTSA international center for statistics and analysis.

The advisory board -- there’s a technical assistance center that is located in Salt Lake, and I don’t’ know if Clayman is in the room or not, but Clayman heads that up. Their function is to provide technical assistance predominantly to states and others with implementing the National Emergency Medical Services Information System.

The technical assistance center had its first meeting of their advisory board yesterday afternoon, and we anticipate that that advisory board welcomed the functional on an ongoing basis to provide recommendations and input to the implementation of NHTSA. Interesting, several other federal agencies or organizations are involved as well and interested in that. From our standpoint NHTSA, there’s some highway traffic records funding that is allowable to be used for NHTSA is actually a requirement that NHTSA should be addressed. And I was down to CDC earlier this week and the cardiovascular health coordinators are pushing from their perspective for implementation of NHTSA.

So, I think there’s a lot of momentum, surely a very positive thing I think for all of us in terms of getting more information, having a better background for research and drive to improve the accountability of Emergency Medical Services on a nationwide basis. Certainly, to improve the accountability, improved research and improved data are all basic tenants of the institute of medicine recommendations, which you have heard about as well. And we, as our other federal counterparts, were involved with sponsoring the institute of medicine report, will be co-sponsoring the dissemination workshops and each of us are respectively evaluating other recommendations from our agencies perspectives.

That’s was just a quick update, Dan, if there are questions, I would be happy to entertain them. Or I’ll be around afterward, too, if there are questions, so… Any questions, I can answer? I can’t really see you, but…

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Oh, yes, hi. How is the University of California assessing the EMS workforce?

DREW DAWSON: The University of California as a center for health profession are looking at first of all a variety of existing data sources such as Bureau of Labor Statistics. Secondly, they are dealing with the National EMS constituencies. Third, they are doing a key informant survey, I think they are probably completed with that process, doing key informant surveys of selected people around the nation. They are looking at data sources such as leads and others in order to piece together all the information. Certainly, one of the challenges is the absence of good data in workforce such as it is in the absence of a good data about clinical information as well. Other questions? Okay, Dan.